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…I do. And I know this is silly because there are so many great free options and, odds are, half the guests will never even see the website.
But here’s the thing. Websites are kind of my life. I work for the digital group in a large media company, and every day I work on websites. Updating them, making them more entertaining, figuring out ways to get more people to visit them…Unfortunately, I’m not a web designer or a web developer—I’m just a web writer. That means that, even though I feel like our site needs to be something special, I don’t really have the skills to build something from scratch.
It seems to me that my options are these:
These all have their drawbacks. The free websites have some great features—online RSVP submission fields, photo albums, and more—but you’re going to have to print something a little more complicated onto your save the dates.
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How much nicer would a clean, simple “thepanthers.com” be than “mywedding.com/thepanthers” or even “ourwedding.thepanthers.com”? But buying a custom domain and redirecting it to a free site is more complicated than it sounds. Some domain-selling sites will put ads on the page that shows up before it’s forwarded. Some will charge you an additional fee to forward the URL. In some cases, you may need to pay for web hosting for that domain, just to send it somewhere else. And basically, it’s just not the best user experience.
The paid wedding websites are fantastic. WeddingJoJo has beautiful themes to choose from, and the features are constantly improving.
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I just e-mailed them to ask about their RSVP feature, and someone responded immediately to let me know that they’re updating the section right now. She even asked me what I’d like to see in the improved feature, which will be launched by the end of next week. Cool, right? Unfortunately, sites like these cost anywhere from $80–$215 per year. And the pay-per-month option means that once your wedding is over, you’re probably going to stop paying, and your site that you worked so hard on will be gone.
I will find a solution to this. I have to. Even if half of our guests are computer illiterate and would never even consider getting wedding information online, the other half need to be seriously impressed by my digital prowess. Time to channel my inner tech geek.
What have you guys used for your wedding websites?
Free option! “ourwedding.thepanthers.com” is not that bad, especially if you have such a mix crowd of technology savvy guests. All the basic features included in the free websites are totally good enough for our needs.
We set up a free wordpress blog and just paid $15 for the domain through their site. It was super easy and we could put everything we wanted on there, though we didn’t do online RSVPs.
Even though I’m a web designer by trade, I chose the free options through weddingwire.com. It’s true, http://www.weddingwire.com/brookeandjacob is still pretty easy. The templates weren’t vast, but as it was only a temp site, and had a ton of functionality, I chose to take the easy route and save myself the trouble.
My husband-to-be made our own. A friend of his bought him our domain this past year for his birthday. It’s actually just a wordpress site that he wrote code for to get it looking like what we had envisioned. And a lot of the code you can look up and copy/paste. If you have a Apple iLife, I also considered using this. If you have any friends that have made their own you may be able to borrow their code written for an RSVP feature - that’s what we plan to do.
Good luck!
I used mywedding.com and LOVE it. We’ve gotten several compliments and I didn’t feel that the domain was too long at all. It fit on our STD’s just fine.
I tried the different make your website sites and didn’t like them because I kept looking for a place to insert custom code! I ended up writing my own. 
I’m going the same route as chexmixDC and cfels.. getting a WordPress site and trying alter the css coding to get it looking good 
So we had the same issues/thoughts about the wedding website thing. I made a knot.com site and then my fiance kinda freaked out about how long the url was and said there was no way we were putting it on our save the dates. We thought about re doing the website somewhere else but then he came up with the idea of buying the domain name that is hisnameandmyname.com. I think he paid $10 for the year (more than we will need) and it just automatically forwards them to the knot site. I havent seen any ads when looking at it or anything else weird. I think he got the domain on monster or maybe it was another site? It is working out great for us and has all of the features we needed and was super easy!
My fiance and I ended up using wix.com. Its a flash-based site that let’s you design your own site. The graphics are beautiful, and the interface is simple to use (drag & drop!).
The drawback is the free site uses their domain, like all the others, PLUS includes your username: ie. wix.com/username/thepanthers
We ended up buying a domain name and attaching it to the site (but you have to pay for premium status on wix.com too).
It was worth it for use since we really wanted a unique site that wasn’t too “weddingy”.
We used Wed Me Do after seeing a friend’s website that looked so professional. It’s flash, and they will build custom elements for you if you dont see what you need–for no charge! (ex. we needed some changes to the registry page template and someone fixed it for us within two days. I think they are based in the UK.
I think we paid $60 and its good until Februrary 2012 (I signed up in August 2010). We did buy our own domain name and the navigation has worked beautifully. I would try them! Also, if you’d like to see how ours works (sometimes the fake templates can be hard to envision in real life), PM me and I’ll give you the address!
I built ours through Blogger and then used a custom domain. I removed all the blog features (like comments and date) and made one “post” that serves as the welcome page, with other tabbed pages for the other information. Not perfect but I think it looks ok and we can keep it after the wedding to use for other things.
We have a free website through wedding wire and it redirects to our wordpress blog.
I had started to set up one on the knot, and my (male) co-worker recommended weddingmapper. I love it, especially the other planning features on the site.
We actually used a Knot website but my husband set us a redirect through his own server so we could have our custom web address. No free advertising for them! haha
I plan to go the Mrs. Lovebug route–buy a cheap domain name and custom-design a blogger page!
I totally understand where you’re coming from. My fiance is a web designer, and it was very important for him to build our site himself.
I would reccomend that you check out etsy.com, and see if you can find someone to design, and build the site for you! Good luck!
I’m currently working on my wedding site from http://www.weebly.com. They have a free and premium account (not sure of the costs), BUT if you have your own domain, you can use it and they’ll still host your site for free!
I looked into a ton of sites for our wedding site - blogger, wordpress, theknot, mywedding, etc. and I’ve liked weebly the most. I wanted to be able to customize the site 100% and with weebly I can just drag and drop elements on the site without having to do any coding (which I do not like!!).
I did a free website through Weddingwire and I Love it! I am also a design junkie, but they did have a lot of great themes to chose from. And It does allow you to do some basic html. I created some fancy headers and photo collages in PhotoShop and them embedded them into the pages I wanted them on. So basically I did a combo template/custom.
I used wedsite.com because the flash album is beautiful! I believe you can get 1 year for $49 or 2 for $69 but search online for a coupon code and you can get $10 off. Your domain would be thepanthers.wedsite.com not too complicated
I used mywedding.com….the url is actually pretty simple and a lot of people have given me compliments on it thinking that I designed the entire thing.
I looked at a lot of sites before I chose mywedding.com…I looked at the ones at theknot.com, projectwedding, myjojo, weddingwire, weddingmapper, and even thought about cooking something up through wix. Mywedding was the easiest to use and I definitely didnt want to pay for something people may or may not look at!
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Mrs. Panther, Atlanta GA/Westport CT Age and Occupation: 24, Web Writer Fiance's Age and Occupation: 25, Music Recording Engineer Engagement Date: March 13, 2010 Wedding Date: July 2011 Venue: The Inn at Longshore About Me: I'm a total goofball who goes through life at a breakneck pace, trying not to knock anything over. I tend to fall in love with everything I encounter, but more than anything, I love my two little kitties, Bela and Josie, and my big kitty, Mr. Panther! As a wannabe crafter, I'm still waiting for my artistic talents to emerge. (Any day now, really.) In the meantime, I spend my days eating anything put in front of me, buying every pair of shoes I see and absorbing wedding inspiration from every inch of my surroundings. Mr. Panther and I are hardcore New Englanders planning Connecticut nuptials from our new home in the Dirty South, and can't wait to mix our newfound love of classic Southern charm with some modern city touches.
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